Go into radio and see the world, one market at a time as you change jobs.

Scott Lopas defies, but also embodies, that philosophy.

For 41 years, he stayed at one station combo: WTKM-AM (1540) and WTKM-FM (104.9) in Hartford.

He started as an announcer in 1971 - making $1.60 an hour - went into sales, "making $50,000-plus coming out of college," he said - and became station manager in 1981, at which time the then-owner told Lopas: " 'By the way, we'll be selling the stations in a few years. You seem to have a knack for this, and we can help you buy it.' "

In 1991, he bought the stations - "there was one bank that would talk to me" - for $750,000.

And last month, he sold them - $1.8 million for the licenses and $150,000 for the real estate - to Dave and Connie Stout of Tomsun Media LLC.

"This has been the only station I ever worked at," said Lopas. "I couldn't get ahead, I guess."

It sounds like Lopas stayed in one place for his whole career, when in truth he has really never stopped moving.

Through WTKM Tours, he has traveled the world with listeners, taking them to places such as Wrigley Field, Portugal and Hawaii.

He and a group just returned from an Alaskan cruise, and he'll take a tour group to Europe in September.

His is quite a journey no matter how you measure it, the details of which are a Norman Rockwell portrait of a local radio experience that doesn't exist much anymore except in smaller markets, such as Hartford.

Lopas was 15 when he stumbled across the station on his radio and heard a friend on the air.

"I thought, 'If Jimmy can do it, I can do it.' "

But, afraid he wouldn't pass the FCC operator's license exam - "these days, all you have to do is sign your name; back then, you had to earn that sucker" - he put it out of his mind. But one day while passing the WTKM studios in downtown Hartford, Lopas "wandered up there" and he was on the air that weekend. The station played easy listening and polka, and it was looking for a weekend show.

He "had a heck of a record collection at home," and began blasting Grand Funk Railroad and the Beatles. That lasted about a month, until one of the out-of-town owners was in town for a meeting, heard him and issued a cease-and-desist, after which "I just started throwing polkas on."

As a high school senior, Lopas would travel to Allenton and Hustisford to sell commercial time "and did pretty well with it."

By the time he bought the stations, he said, "I had built up a pretty good stable of advertisers" drawn to them "because our identity was unique and different."

Even today, "if a commercial comes on, you can't flip to the other sound-alike station," because there are none, and so advertisers are loyal. Today, less than 5% of the $1 million the station bills annually is from national advertising.

And although he knew nothing about polkas, once Lopas started doing location broadcasts of polka bands at picnics and festivals, he discovered that polka culture was "incredibly infectious. They're out there to have fun and they do."

Today, the AM station airs an in-house, voice-tracked oldies format, and the FM airs local talk in the morning, classic country in the afternoon and polka at night.

"Variety is the closest thing we can come up with" when Arbitron asks for format information for its ratings surveys, Lopas said.

The AM is a 500-watt daytime station and the 24-hour FM is 6,000 watts, and its signal reaches into Milwaukee.

The average listener is 50 years-plus, and the station's 14-member staff - half of whom are part-time - is "very mature."

Some of them "have been here longer than I have," Lopas said.

The FM station airs five religious services on Sunday - at $100 a pop.

Three times a day during the news, the local funeral director reads obituaries - "if there are any" - and the local car dealership calls in its ads. If Mayberry had a radio station, it might sound like this.

"We're a throwback to how radio was in its heyday," Lopas said. And he said the new owners share his vision of "community service, taking care of the staff and advertisers, and focusing on more than bottom-line issues. They get what we're doing, and I don't know how many other opportunities I would have" to sell to like-minded buyers.

"We reached a comfort zone here. It was a fairly easygoing kind of thing.

"But I think it's about time," he said, "for somebody to step in and inject (the stations with) new life."